Riding the Momentum at Velocity 2018

On February 28, ImageSoft hosted its premiere user conference, Velocity 2018 in Novi, MI, drawing participants from as far away as Yakima (WA) and Cleveland and as close by as Macomb County. It was a jam-packed day, filled with customer spotlights chronicling the long-term adoption of paperless processes by courts, municipal governments and private businesses.

ImageSoft’s Adam Rose served as an energetic MC to get the conference rolling. Launching the morning session was ImageSoft’s CEO Dave Hawkins, who spoke about the agility of ImageSoft’s user-facing products and how we’re eager to continue to check in with customers as we build better solutions. Dave handed off the mic to ImageSoft’s Business Development Director Vince Hanson, who was tested on his knowledge of employees vs. customers. As attendees introduced themselves, Vince encouraged them to share how many years they had been using ImageSoft and OnBase products and to describe the product’s coolest aspect.

Documenting the Cool

Perhaps the best “cool” feature was described by Therese Murphy from Yakima County District Court: she told us how a portion of the clerk’s work had been transferred to judges with the implementation of OnBase and TrueFiling solutions, and the judges were none the wiser…except for Judge Brian Sanderson sitting next to her.

Other attendees mentioned the end of overnight fees to send documents, the move away from paper and its storage, and no more lost files. In one municipal court, judges now hear cases without any paper files at all and use TrueSign features to validate signatures. Confirming that attorneys have actually filed certain documents has eased issues for judges in a local Michigan court. Northern Michigan attendees may win the prize for best improvement: they cut costs in half during the first six months of using ImageSoft’s solutions. In one of Michigan’s Circuit Courts, the clerks no longer get their daily workout from physically carrying files around the courthouse.

Industry Panel Highlights

Our Industry Panel shared significant insight into their implementation of paperless processes. Asked about the challenges they faced that pushed them to seek a better way, Cleveland Municipal Court IT Implementation Manager Nicole Fields described a common problem: they were running out of storage space to maintain paper files. Similarly, access to paper files was limited to one person at a time and documents were easily misplaced or languished in someone’s in-box. The court started “scan central” to scan and shred paper files and reduce storage costs. Bill Nichols, a prosecuting attorney in Michigan’s Monroe County, agreed and described how staff cuts and a desire to eliminate redundant entries motivated the county to automate workflow and documents.

Managing Change, Giving Advice

The panel members who were from courts spoke about ways of managing the change that comes from moving to a paperless solution using eFiling, case management, document workflow and management solutions. They suggested creating a team process, starting with judges or senior managers as champions, and showing how streamlining processes gives staff more time to devote to their core roles without having to manually push paper. Others, like Melanie Eskritt, Business Initiatives Consultant from Empire Life Insurance, agreed and suggested to listen to your users, dig deep but don’t push, and maintain constant communication and feedback. Allow time to design and test out the process and build in ways to personalize and customize the solution to the exact needs of the staff. A phased implementation is useful, especially to work out bugs and workflow. Add buttons, revise the plan, refine the workflow to best suit your individual needs. Focus on training.

Budget considerations took center stage and each panel participant described the challenges. Proving long-term benefits and demonstrating time savings can be a part of the strategy. Identifying how going paperless can ease backlogs and stop the loss of files can help. Nicole stole the show at Velocity when she said, “we can’t be like Oprah, you get a license and you get a license and everybody gets a license!” Limiting the number of licenses helps keep fees in check.

OnBase Update

Carolyn Kane started her update of what’s new and coming soon from OnBase by comparing it to the evolution of the cell phone – what was you first cell phone like?

Carolyn described OnBase17, new unity forms and the redesigned unity web client with greater accessibility built in. New options and new templates are now available for DocuSign, which enables e-signing of documents. OnBase now integrates with the Workday cloud application for finance, human capital management and education. Brainware by Hyland streamlines data capture from documents through advanced document recognition, OCR and data extraction engines.

The Queen of Yakima County

Therese Murphy rightly wears the crown for conquering paper files and leading Yakima County District Court into a paperless environment. Losing their unpleasant and inconvenient storage space in the old jailhouse spurred the county to find better processes for their 2 million cases a year. Their goals of efficiency, cost savings, employee satisfaction and better customer service laid the groundwork for their implementation. Prior to the new solution, the annual court expenses for 1 ½ office tech, 1 full-time office specialist, files/forms/printing and copier fees was over $152,000. After implementing OnBase and TrueFiling, these expenses dropped to approximately $112,000, including software maintenance costs. No staff members were dropped but rather were re-assigned to other value-add tasks.

Breakout Sessions

After lunch, breakout sessions spotlighted customer success stories with greater detail, including two insurance company customers, Empire Insurance and Gleaner Life Insurance, as well as Arlington County (VA) Circuit Court, and the Michigan Courts MiFILE project. Hyland gave a detailed account of using OnBase for Accounts Payable, and Brad Smith, our Senior Justice Consultant and Ben Martin from Mentis Technology provided insight into eFiling and electronic records in the courtroom and content management solutions.

Wrap Up and Looking Forward to Community Live

During the wrap-up, raffle gifts were distributed to many lucky winners. Donning western gear, Adam Rose invited everyone to mark their calendars for Community Live, September 9-13 in Nashville.